Derby 11.05.2002-Liverpool 10.05.2002

This short CDR (only 33 minutes) presents excerpts from the two concerts identified in its title, Derby 11.05.2002-Liverpool 10.05.2002. Another very limited edition from the Greek experimental label Absurd, Matt Davis and Mark Wastell push electro-acoustic improvisation to its farthest trenches, threatening to disappear into nothingness. Matt Davis is credited with electronics and processing. Mark Wastell, better known for his cello playing, is heard here on "amplified textures," without any more details. The music consists mostly of lengthy silences, crackling electrical sounds that resemble (but may very well not be) steel wool gently crunched over a guitar pick-up, a wire teasing an audio input jack, and various manipulations of contact microphones. The improvisation is kept deliberately Spartan; silence literally intruding whenever things begin to develop into something richer. The sounds are as generic as can be in this field. They could be produced by anything, and to a certain extent, anyone from the post-AMM electro-acoustic improv scene. In avant-garde music, friendliness is not a requirement, but these two pieces go a long way robbing the listener of his or her pleasure. It requires your full attention and does give way to a few interesting interrogations at first, but soon the mind wanders off. Asceticism can produce stunning works of art (the names of Otomo Yoshihide, Taku Sugimoto, and the group Polwechsel immediately come to mind), but on this album it lacks that immaterial something that gives the music its identity.